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This is me

A busy mind in many places. One of my children was asked what I did for a living. The list given includes my main occupation of farming but also goes on to school bus driver, carpentry, furniture making, developer, designer, landscaping, handyman and more. I've traveled in most states of the union (I'm missing two) and several foreign countries. My favorite vacation is a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I like to read. Favorite authors include western author Louis L'Amour, science fiction writer Anne McCaffrey and architect Sarah Susanka. I like to sing and am a bass in our local barbershop chorus. In church I also prefer the bass part. My best friend and wife, Karen, and I have 3 children who are all busy and happily building their own lives. We have twin granddaughters born in September 2011 and another granddaughter born in April 2014.

Oh yeah, It’s been another one of those days. It’s cold! We are in the midst of one of those brutal cold snaps that do not happen very often, and all you can do is try to stay warm. I’m glad I do not have livestock to care for anymore. It’s not even officially winter yet!

The cold has caused trouble for lots of folks here and repairmen are busy.

Our car was just hauled in for the second time this week. Something went wrong, we thought we had it fixed, but we did not. With the cold, tow truck operators are working overtime. Semi’s stalled on the side of the road are more important than a car sitting in the garage that will not start.

The plumbers finally came to fix a venting problem that has had sewer gas leaking into the house for several weeks. They were here earlier and thought they had the problem fixed, but no. Now we have walls and ceilings opened up that will need to be repaired when they leave.

We’ve had over 6 inches of snow in the last week. It seemed to have settled down, but now the wind is blowing out of a new direction so the snow is moving again.

There are several school buses that have been having fuel and battery related problems. Lucky for us that all of them got back to the barn.

I am thankful for electricity and modern snow removal equipment. Repairmen are available to fix the problems I cannot fix myself. We can pay our bills. Our problems are all fixable. Others have it much worse.

We have a friend who has family in the Central African Republic where there is no rule of law. He is not sure day to day if they are even alive.

People in the Philippines have only rubble to live in and are not sure where their next meal or drink of water will come from.

People in Illinois are still cleaning up from a night of tornadoes a few weeks back and it is cold there also.

Many around the world struggle with disease and injury.

Yes, our problems are small.

Michael

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Try and stay warm (rather obvious advice, right?! Sometimes I think it gets too damned cold for me here in Missouri, but clearly it could be much worse. One of these days I’ll get the heater working in my truck too haha, so I share a little bit of your breakdown pains